Baptist church government rests on the principle that authority belongs to the local congregation itself rather than to any bishop, presbytery, or denominational hierarchy, and the office of deacon reflects that structure directly: deacons are elected by the members of their own congregation, serve at that congregation's pleasure according to its own bylaws, and typically work alongside, rather than under the sole direction of, the congregation's elected elders or pastor in overseeing the church's practical and spiritual welfare.
Some Baptist congregations maintain a formal distinction between elders, who hold primary responsibility for spiritual oversight and teaching, and deacons, whose responsibility centers more on the servant ministry described in Acts, benevolence, hospitality, care for the needy, and support at the Lord's Supper and baptism, while other congregations blend the two roles or use only one of the titles. Because each Baptist congregation is self governing, the deacon's exact scope of responsibility, term of service, and relationship to the pastor varies considerably from church to church and even more so across the many distinct Baptist denominations and independent Baptist congregations worldwide, with no single confessional body able to standardize the office across all of them.